Title: Interview with Edward C. Wells - #6

Original format: Betacam

Item Id.: 1985.135.29_6

Description: This is Part 6 of 12 of an interview with Edward C. Wells. This interview was conducted by Donald A. Schmechel and George C. Martin in March 1985. This part of the interview was conducted by Donald A. Schmechel on March 9, 1985.

Edward C. Wells (1910-1986) was an engineer and senior vice president of the Boeing Company, and served on the company’s board of directors.  He played a major role in the design of Boeing planes, from bombers, such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-29, to jet transports, including the 707, 747 and others.  

Wells was born in Boise, Idaho and graduated from Grant High School in Portland, Oregon. He attended Willamette University for two years then attended Stanford University, graduating in 1931 with a degree in engineering.

Wells was still in college when he went to work at Boeing in the summer of 1930. After graduation, Wells returned to Seattle to join the Boeing Company's engineering staff in 1931 as a draftsman and engineer.   He was chief of preliminary design engineering by 1937 and was credited with the wing design of Boeing’s B-17 bomber. Wells was named Boeing's chief engineer in 1943, and in 1947 became Vice President for Engineering. Among other positions, Wells also served as general manager of military aircraft systems and as vice president for product development at Boeing. He retired from Boeing as senior vice president in 1972, and served as a consultant to the company and a director until 1978.

Among his accolades, Wells received the Lawrence Sperry Award of the Institute of Aeronautical Scientists in 1942 for outstanding contributions to the art of airplane design. He also received the Fawcett Aviation Award in 1944, and the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1980.

This interview is part of the Donald Schmechel Oral History Collection. Don Schmechel, who was a member of the Seattle Public Library Foundation board, began this project with Seattle Public Library in 1984, with the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) brought on board as a partner in early 1985. Schmechel himself worked to raise the funding for the project, and he volunteered his time to manage the project and to conduct interviews along with a crew of volunteers. Originally titled the Videotaping Historic Figures (VHF) Program, the project interviewed 91 people, and MOHAI holds the interviews for 32 of these individuals.The interviews conducted with these Seattle civic, business and cultural leaders in 1985 are valuable first-hand accounts that provide insight into developments taking place in the mid-twentieth century.

Digitization of this videotape material has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

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